For four to five months each winter, we cast ourselves deep into an undulating, churning, often thrilling road adventure, and from the moment we arrive back in Jackson, the finality is so abrupt that it almost feels as though we've awakened with a shocking gasp from an epic dream.
We revert to homebodies, avoiding the hum and thrum of a growing Mount Washington Valley. Daily pleasure is found in two woodland walks, a humble country kitchen, mugs of tea, a good book at bedtime, and penning letters to friends.
After the frenetic go, go, go of putting another 17,000 miles on Clarence, we land back where we began. It's almost dizzying. This monk falls back into privacy and safe exhaustion. And there come moments when I look back at it all and wonder, how could any of it have happened?
All true travel is a journey away from ignorance into discovery.
Our trips always force this solitary to grow, but this year, I felt
like…
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